To me....to you

Sorry for the long absence, I've been working solidly for what feels like months and am currently waiting desperately for Tuesday to hurry up and be here so I can have a day off!

We've started the task of striping the wallpaper (woodchip) in the spare room and it's uncovered some interesting things. The first is that for some reason there is only woodchip on two of the four walls, the walls have about six layers of wallpaper of varying patterns and have at some point been painted blue, thirdly the wall the window sits in had been very nicely plastered at some point, oh and fourth and most terrible is that the wall that connects to our nextdoor neighbour has a hole about an inch big which looks to have been letting water in somehow as the wall has been or still is damp, it doesn't feel wet, but certainly looks like it has been at some point. I'm in the middle of charging the camera so I can put a picture here to show you. So, this is probably going to need work isn't it?! Brilliant. We've decided we'll not bother taking the paper down in our room or the hallway, just paint over what's up as a result. But, I'm glad we've found this problem now so that if it is recent we can stop the rot so to speak.

It's His Lordship's™ parents birthdays this weekend, they'll be 60, so we're all going for a meal on Friday to celebrate. This year is the first year we won't be going to Creamfields, which is a bit disappointing, but I think we're going to need that money to get a builder in! Think it might be time to call in a favour from one of my mates who is in the trade.

Anyway, better get on with taking the rest of the paper down, we've borrowed a steamer from our painter and decorator friend which he needs back next week so we've got about another day with it. This works out well because it means we aren't on Andrew Time™. He is managing to faff over some things though.....

Hancock

We went to the cinema tonight with D and P to see Hancock. His Lordship said he thought it was good, especially as we didn't pay to get in. D won four tickets to see any film so we chose that as P and I haven't seen the batman before the one that's just been released. I thought it was a nice waste of a few hours but I felt that without Will Smith it wouldn't have worked half so well.

How cute is this?!

Nigella, eat your heart out

Well, today I am the domestic goddess. I have become so sick of cooking the same old same old every day so today I decided on something different. I made a mushroom stroganoff from scratch from a James Martin recipe minus one or two ingredients that we didn't have. Actually it was rather delicious. I did it with roast potatoes and peas. I think it might have been nicer with some meat in it though.

I've also baked some fairy cakes, which are currently in the oven. All this AND i've done a full days work all before lunchtime. Basically, Nigella should look to me for inspiration!?

Insurance nightmare

So, once again being a media type has given me untold benefits, oh, wait, no it hasn't. Yep, that's right, it's insurance renewal time and the quotes have been silly. Still, I've managed to get a combined figure of around five hundred of your english pounds for both car and home which is a lot better than some companies were charging. All this talk of recession etc must not apply to Insurance companies...

Credit Crunch

I came across an internet tool which tells me how much I'll save on my weekly food shopping, so I used it and discovered I could save £44,000 a year by switching my grocery shopping to Aldi. His Lordship and I agreed to give it a go and decided to do some shopping there. It turns out that food shopping at Aldi isn't that straight forward, for a start you can't buy everything and they have a limited variety of goods. I've so far tried two shops and neither have had honey! Or vinegar. Or sour cream (His Lordship isn't going to be happy that I promised to make mushroom stroganoff and won't be able to). Or meat substitutes. We did however manage to get plums (I've tasted sweeter lemons), grapes and peppers for 69p each as per the advertising. It strikes me that in order to beat any supermarket pricing structure you have to go to all of them, and only buy certain things in places. This feels a bit wrong because it probably costs the difference in petrol! I think we'll stick to ASDA.

Poppy's fur still isn't growing back and she still has an unsightly patch where the operation was done but she seems to have gotten over it all very well, she was soon back to her running and jumping self, we're going to let her out in a few days so we'll need everyone to cross their fingers that she comes back! I think she will, she came back after three days so she clearly knows where she live. Oh, and the cat biscuits we bought her from good old Aldi smell like vomit, so she won't be getting those again either!

In house news, I decided to strip some of the paper off the spare room wall, and it looks like it's paper on top of paper on top of painted blue walls. I'm going to sort it all out this week as I've been waiting for the summer rain to stop and it looks like we might have a break this weekend. I'm slightly concerned that we might need to plaster, looks like I'm going to have to learn how to do that if we do as it was my choice to decorate in there!

Today, I have made shortbread, as you can see the diet is going swimmingly!

I'm terrible at this...

I keep forgetting to update this place, mainly because I forget but also because I haven't got a great deal to say.

The one thing of note is that Poppy will no longer be able to breed. I'm in two minds about how I feel. She was so listless and groggy when I picked her up from the vet I felt immediately guilty that we had chosen to put her through the operation. Afterall, it's not like it's been her choice to not have babies, and they had to shave her side, so she has a rather undignified patch where they cut into her, and the nurse said it could take some time for that to grow back. It has revealed to us how thin she is too, the fur seems to bulk her out. I'm also a bit sad that she won't have kittens because part of me would have liked to have introduced a new cat to her, and it would have been so much easier had it been one of her own.

BUT, the fact of the matter is this, it is cruel to bring more cats into the world (even if they are loved) when there are so many in animal shelters that need homes and will probably never get one. She didn't need to have babies, and she'll be able to go out and see things other than these four walls. She had just better come back, that's all I can say!!??!

I see the chicken farm is expanding at a rate of knots. Before long they'll have a small holding and be giving Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall a run for his money!

Montana looks like a very picturesque place, not sure what I think to ziplock omelettes though -does the plastic not melt?